Masters Of War

Come you masters of war You that build all the guns You that build the death planes You that build all the bombs You that hide behind walls You that hide behind desks I just want you to know I can see through your masks. You that never done nothin' But build to destroy You play with my world Like it's your little toy You put a gun in my hand And you hide from my eyes And you turn and run farther When the fast bullets fly. Like Judas of old You lie and deceive A world war can be won You want me to believe But I see through your eyes And I see through your brain Like I see through the water That runs down my drain. You fasten all the triggers For the others to fire Then you set back and watch When the death count gets higher You hide in your mansion' As young people's blood Flows out of their bodies And is buried in the mud. You've thrown the worst fear That can ever be hurled Fear to bring children Into the world For threatening my baby Unborn and unnamed You ain't worth the blood That runs in your veins. How much do I know To talk out of turn You might say that I'm young You might say I'm unlearned But there's one thing I know Though I'm younger than you That even Jesus would never Forgive what you do. Let me ask you one question Is your money that good Will it buy you forgiveness Do you think that it could I think you will find When your death takes its toll All the money you made Will never buy back your soul. And I hope that you die And your death'll come soon I will follow your casket In the pale afternoon And I'll watch while you're lowered Down to your deathbed And I'll stand over your grave 'Til I'm sure that you're dead.------- Bob Dylan 1963

Tuesday, May 31, 2011

By Ron ForthoferPresident Obama's recent statements about using the 1967 borders as the basis for a settlement of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict sparked strong reactions. These reactions also show that many people are terribly misinformed about who started the Six Day War.

Initially Israel said that it had been attacked and that its survival was at stake. However Israel began the fighting when it launched a sneak air attack on Egypt on June 5th. This Israeli attack essentially won the war since it destroyed the bulk of the Egyptian air force whose planes were still on the ground.Since both U.S. and Israeli intelligence services confidently predicted that Israel would quickly win a war against the Arab forces, the claim about Israel’s survival being at risk was purely propaganda. Israeli General Matityah Peled, chief of the logistical command during the 1967 war, was blunt in March 1972: “Since 1949 no one was in any position to threaten the very existence of Israel. Despite this, we continue to nurture the feeling of inferiority as though we were a weak and insignificant people struggling to preserve our own existence in the face of impending extermination.” In another 1972 interview, Mordechai Bentov, a former member of the Israeli ruling coalition during the June war, stated: “This whole story about the threat of extermination was totally contrived and then elaborated on afterwards to justify the annexation of new Arab territories.”Confronted with this evidence about the Israeli attack, many now argue that the attack was preemptive. Leading up to the Israeli attack, both sides were engaging in brinkmanship with many provocations particularly along the Israeli-Syrian border. On May 22nd, Yitzak Rabin, Israel’s Chief of Staff, met with Moshe Dayan, Israeli military legend. According to Rabin, Dayan critiqued the Israeli Cabinet and Army saying: “The nature and scale of our reprisal actions against Syria and Jordan had left Nasser with no choice but to defend his image … thereby setting off a train of escalation in the entire region.”Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser took steps to take the pressure off Syria. He ordered the United Nations Emergency Force (UNEF) from Egyptian territory. Little noted is that Israel immediately repeatedly rejected requests to allow the UNEF to take up positions on its territory. Nasser also moved large numbers of Egyptian troops into the Sinai followed by Israel beginning a large-scale mobilization of its reserves. Nasser subsequently said the Straits of Tiran were closed to Israeli flagships and to ships carrying oil and weapons bound for Israel. Israel had not sent a flagship through the straits in nearly two years, but it did ship Iranian oil through the straits. Diplomats worked to resolve this crisis, and the Egyptian vice-president was to meet with President Johnson on June 7th. Dean Rusk, the U.S. Secretary of State, was bitterly disappointed by the Israeli attack since he thought he could have achieved a peaceful resolution of the crisis.Despite these moves by Nasser, Israeli Foreign Minister Abba Eban wrote in his autobiography “Nasser did not want war; he wanted victory without war”. James Reston of the New York Times wrote from Cairo on June 4th that: “Cairo does not want war and it is certainly not ready for war.” In 1968 Yitzak Rabin said: “I do not think Nasser wanted war. The two divisions he sent to the Sinai in May [1967] would not have been sufficient to launch an offensive against Israel. He knew it and we knew it.” In 1982, Israeli Prime Minister Begin admitted: “In June, 1967, we again had a choice. The Egyptian army concentrations in the Sinai did not prove that Nasser was really about to attack us. We must be honest with ourselves. We decided to attack him.” Reinforcing the position that Egypt was not prepared for war with Israel, Egypt then had 50,000 of its crack troops tied down in Yemen.Given these doubts about Israel’s stated reasons, why did Israel attack? Was it to deny Nasser a political victory and to crush the idea of Arab unity? Or was the intent to destroy Arab weapons and forces? In a 1976 interview Moshe Dayan said the attack on Syria was due to Israelis’ greed for Syrian land. It is likely that all three of these reasons played some role in the decision to attack. However, regardless of the reason, in July 1967 Gen. Yigal Allon, then deputy prime minister for the Labor Party, created a plan to solidify Israel’s occupation of key parts of the West Bank and to prevent the formation of a viable Palestinian state. This Allon Plan, slightly expanded, has basically been implemented in the West Bank, making daily life almost impossible for Palestinians and leading to horrific violence and terrible losses for both Palestinians and Israelis.Israel was the clear aggressor in the 1967 war. Since international law bans the taking of land by force, Obama was on solid ground in emphasizing the June 4, 1967 borders. However, even if Israel had been the victim instead of the aggressor of the attack, the Geneva Accords prohibit the placement of people from an occupying power on the land being occupied. All the Israeli colonialists living in the Occupied Territories, including East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights, are thus residing there illegally.However Obama’s statement ceded power to Israel re peace negotiations when he added that there should be mutually agreed upon land swaps to the June 4, 1967 borders in order to provide secure and recognized borders for both Israel and Palestine. If Israel doesn’t agree to the proposed land swaps, then what? In addition, land swaps reward Israel for violating international law.If Palestinians want a two-state resolution, that is their choice. However, instead of starting negotiations from a point that flouts international law, why not offer a proposal to the world community that recognizes international law and also takes into account the difficulty of dealing with the Israeli colonialists on Palestinian land?One possible proposal might be to offer the lease to Israel of a small portion of Palestinian land at an annual cost of some billions of dollars. This leasing would represent a huge and unpalatable concession of the part of the Palestinians. To make this proposal digestible for the Palestinians, Israel would have to offer huge inducements.These inducements might include, for example, the following: 1) Israeli reparations to those Palestinians whose homes were damaged or destroyed in the Occupied Territories; 2) Israeli reparations to those Palestinians whose olive trees were uprooted and to others whose means of livelihood were damaged or destroyed; 3) Israeli reparations for the damaged Palestinian infrastructure; 4) Palestinian control of the aquifers on the land leased to Israelis with an equal distribution of water to Palestinians and Israelis on a per-person basis; 5) Israelis living on the leased land recognize that they are living in Palestine and are subject to Palestinian laws and taxes; 6) Israelis living on Palestinian lands must turn in their weapons; 7) Israel must tear down the Wall that is on Palestinian land; and 8) Israel must release all Palestinian prisoners.Israeli colonialists living outside the leased land must return to Israel. There would also have to be a truth and reconciliation commission, similar to that used in South Africa, addressing the violations of international law. In addition, any Israeli military attacks on the Palestinian territories would terminate the lease agreement. An international force would monitor the borders and would be based on both sides of the recognized borders. Finally, Israel must provide Palestine with Israeli land equal in value, not size, to those lands Israel leases in Palestine.There are several other points, including reparations for killing and wounding civilians, to be considered for a comprehensive resolution. In addition, the ‘Right of Return’ is a key point not considered here. This proposal represents only one possible suggestion for dealing with the Occupation.Many would say that this idea is crazy because it is almost certain that Israel and the U.S. would immediately reject it. Why spend any time even thinking of something like this? However, face it, these two nations would oppose any reasonable resolution. It would be up to the international community to use sanctions and other tools such as the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement to bring about a fair resolution. Unless justice, human rights and international law are honored in any resolution, there will not be a lasting peace in the Middle East.- Ron Forthofer, Ph.D. is a retired professor of biostatistics. He contributed this article to PalestineChronicle.com.

A renewed wave of development babble began flowing soon after the February launch of the World Bank's ten-year Strategy document, "Africa's Future and the World Bank's Support to It". Within three months, a mini-tsunami of Afro-optimism swept in: the International Monetary Fund's Regional Economic Outlook for SubSaharan Africa, the Economic Commission on Africa's upbeat study, the African World Economic Forum's Competitiveness Report, and the African Development Bank's discovery of a vast new "middle class" (creatively defined to include the 20% of Africans whose expenditures are $2-4/day).

Drunk on their own neoliberal rhetoric, the multilateral establishment swoons over the continent's allegedly excellent growth and export prospects, in the process downplaying underlying structural oppressions in which they are complicit: corrupt power relations, economic vulnerability, worsening Resource Curses, land grabs and threats of environmental chaos and disease.

These are merely mentioned in passing in the Bank's Africa Strategy – the most comprehensive of these neoliberal-revival tracts – but a frank, honest accounting of the author's role is inconceivable, even after an internal Independent Evaluation Group report scathing of mistakes the last time around. That effort, the 2005 Africa Action Plan (AAP), was associated with the G-8's big-promise little-delivery Summit in Gleneagles.

The Bank admits the AAP was a "top-down exercise, prepared in a short time with little consultations with clients and stakeholders", and that the "performance of the Bank's portfolio in the Region" was lacking. Tellingly, the Bank confesses, "People who had to implement the plan did not have much engagement with, and in some cases were not even aware of, the AAP."

Tyrants and democrats

Though in 2021 the same will probably be said of this Strategy, the Bank claims its antidote is "face-to-face discussions with over 1,000 people in 36 countries." However, as quotes from attendees prove, the Bank could regurgitate only the most banal pablum.

Nor does the Strategy propose grand new alliances (e.g. with the Gates Foundation). There is just a quick nod to two civilized-society partners, the Africa Capacity Building Foundation (Harare) and African Economic Research Consortium (Nairobi) which together have educated 3000 local neoliberals, the Bank proudly remarks.

Embarrassingly, the Bank hurriedly stoops to endorse three continental institutions: the African Union (AU), New Partnership for Africa's Development (founded by former SA president Thabo Mbeki in 2001) and African Peer Review Mechanism (2003). The latter two are usually described as outright failures.

As for the former, there were once high hopes that the AU would respond to Africa's socio-political and economic aspirations, but not only did Muammar Gaddafi exercise a strong grip as AU president and source of no small patronage.

Horace Campbell pointed out other leadership contradictions in Pambazuka News in March: "That the current leaders of Africa could support the elevation of Teodoro Obiang Nguema to be the chairperson of this organisation pointed to the fact that most of these leaders such as Denis Sassou-Nguesso of Republic of Congo, Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe, Omar al-Bashir of Sudan , Paul Biya of Cameroon, Blaise Compaore of Burkina Faso, Meles Zenawi of Ethiopia, Ali Bongo of Gabon, King Mswati III of Swaziland, Yoweri Museveni of Uganda, Ismail Omar Guelleh of Djibouti, and Yahya Jammeh of Gambia are not serious about translating the letters of the Constitutive Act into reality."

These sorts of rulers are the logical implementers of the Bank Strategy. No amount of bogus consultations with civilized society can disguise the piling up of Odious Debts on African societies courtesy of the Bank, IMF and their allied strongmen borrowers.

Yet these men are nowhere near as strong as the Bank assumes, when reproducing a consultancy's map of countries considered to have "low" levels of "state fragility", notably including Tunisia and Libya – just as the former tyranny fell and the latter experienced revolt.

In contrast, the Africa Strategy makes no mention whatsoever of those pesky, uncivil-society democrats who are opposed to Bank partner-dictators. Remarks Pambazuka editor Firoze Manji, "Their anger is being manifested in the new awakenings that we have witnessed in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Yemen, Côte d'Ivoire, Algeria, Senegal, Benin, Burkina Faso, Gabon, Djibouti, Botswana, Uganda, Swaziland, and South Africa. These awakenings are just one phase in the long struggle of the people of Africa to reassert control over our own destinies, to reassert dignity, and to struggle for self-determination and emancipation."

Unsound African architecture

The Bank will continue standing in their way by funding oppressors, leaving the Africa Strategy with a structurally-unsound, corny architectural metaphor: "The strategy has two pillars – competitiveness and employment, and vulnerability and resilience – and a foundation – governance and public-sector capacity."

Setting aside hypocritical governance rhetoric, the first pillar typically collapses because greater competitiveness often requires importing machines to replace workers (hence South Africa's unemployment rate doubled through post-apartheid economic restructuring). And Bank advice to all African countries to do the same thing – export! – exacerbates mineral or cash crop gluts, such as were experienced from 1973 until the commodity boom of 2002-08.

The Bank Strategy also faces "three main risks: the possibility that the global economy will experience greater volatility; conflict and political violence; and resources available to implement the strategy may be inadequate."

These are not just risks but certainties, given that world economic managers left unresolved all the problems causing the 2008-09 meltdown; that resource-based conflicts will increase as shortages emerge (oil especially as the Gulf of Guinea shows); and that donors will be chopping aid budgets for years to come. Still, while the Bank retains "some confidence that these risks can be mitigated", in each case its Strategy actually amplifies them.

It is self-interested – but not strategic for Africa – for the Bank to promote further exports from African countries already suffering extreme primary commodity dependency. Economically, the Strategy is untenable, what with European countries cracking up and defaulting, Japan stagnant, the US probably entering a double-dip recession, and China and India madly competing with Western mining houses and bio-engineering firms for African resources and land grabs. Nowhere can be found any genuine intent of assisting Africa to industrialise in a balanced way.

The Bank's bland counterclaim: "While Africa, being a relatively small part of the world economy, can do little to avoid such a contingency, the present strategy is designed to help African economies weather these circumstances better than before." But these are not "circumstances" and "contingencies": they are core features of North-South political economy from which Africa should be seeking protection.

Where will water storage and power come from? Bank promotion of megadams (such as Bujagali in Uganda or Inga in the DRC) ignores the inability of poor people to pay for hydropower, not to mention worsening climate-related evaporation, siltation or tropical methane emissions.

Other silences are revealing, such as in this Bank confession of prior multilateral silo-mentality: "Focusing on health led to a neglect of other factors such as water and sanitation that determine child survival." The reason water was underfunded following Jeffrey Sachs' famous 2001 World Health Organisation macroeconomic report was partly that his analysts didn't accurately assess why $130 billion in borehole and piping investments failed during the 1980s-90s: insufficient subsidies to cover operating and maintenance deficits.

Lack of subsidies for basic infrastructure is an ongoing problem, in part because "the G-8 promise of doubling aid to Africa has fallen about $20 billion short." So as a result, "the present strategy emphasizes partnerships – with African governments, the private sector and other development partners," even though Public-Private Partnerships rarely work. Most African privatized water systems have fallen apart.

South Africa has had many such failed experiments, in every sector. The latest Bank loan to Pretoria, for $3.75 billion (its largest-ever project loan) is itself a screaming rebuttal to the Strategy's claim that "the Bank's program in Africa will emphasize sustainable infrastructure. The approach goes beyond simply complying with environmental safeguards. It seeks to help countries develop clean energy strategies that choose the appropriate product mix, technologies and location to promote both infrastructure and the environment."

That loan also caused extreme electricity pricing inequity and legitimation of corrupt African National Congress construction tenders. This generated condemnation of the government by its own investigators and of the Bank by even Johannesburg's Business Day newspaper, normally a reliable ally.

South African workers would also take issue with a Bank assumption: "The regulation of labor (in South Africa, for instance) often constrains businesses… In some countries, such as South Africa (where the unemployment rate is 25 percent), more flexibility in the labor market will increase employment."

This view, expressed occasionally by the Bank's aggressively neoliberal Africa chief economist, Shanta Devarajan, is refuted not only by 1.3 million lost jobs in 2009-10 but by the September 2010 International Monetary Fund Article IV consultation analysis, which puts SA near the top of world labour flexibility rankings, trailing only the US, Britain and Canada.

There are other neoliberal dogmas, e.g., "Microfinance, while growing, has huge, untapped potential in Africa." The Bank apparently missed the world microfinance crisis symbolized by the firing of Muhammad Yunus as Grameen executive (just as the Strategy was released), the many controversies over usurious interest rates, or the 200,000 small farmer suicides in Andra Pradesh, India in recent years due to unbearable microdebt loads.

The Bank also endorses cellphones, allegedly "becoming the most valuable asset of the poor. The widespread adoption of this technology – largely due to the sound regulatory environment and entrepreneurship – opens the possibility that it could serve as a vehicle for transforming the lives of the poor." The Bank forgets vast problems experienced in domestic cellphone markets, including foreign corporate ownership and control.

And as for what is indeed "the biggest threat to Africa because of its potential impact, climate change could also be an opportunity. Adaptation will have to address sustainable water management, including immediate and future needs for storage, while improving irrigation practices as well as developing better seeds." Dangers to the peasantry and to urban managers of the likely 7 degree rise and worsened flooding/droughts are underplayed, and opportunities for wider vision for a post-carbon Africa are ignored, such as the importance of the North (including the World Bank itself) paying its vast climate debt to Africa.

"An African Consensus"?

Compared to Bank funding for insane mega-projects such as the $3.75 billion lent to South Africa to build the world's fourth largest coal-fired power plant last April, not much is at stake in the Strategy's portfolio: $2.5 billion/year over the decade-long plan.

Nevertheless, the Africa Strategy hubris is dangerous not only for diverging from reality so obviously, but for seeking a route from Bank Strategy to "an African consensus." The Bank commits to "work closely with the AU, G-20 and other fora to support the formulation of Africa's policy response to global issues, such as international financial regulations and climate change, because speaking with one voice is more likely to have impact."

Does Africa need a sole neoliberal voice claiming "consensus", speaking from shaky pillars atop crumbling foundations based on false premises and corrupted processes, piloting untenable projects, allied with incurable tyrants, impervious to demands for democracy and social justice? If so, the Bank has a Strategy already unfolding.

And if all goes well with the status quo, the Strategy's predictions for 2021 include a decline in the poverty rate by 12 percent and at least five countries entering the ranks of middle-income economies (candidates are Ghana, Mauritania, Comoros, Nigeria, Kenya and Zambia).

More likely, though, is worsening uneven development and growing Bank irrelevance as Africans continue courageously protesting neoliberalism and dictatorship, in search of both free politics and socio-economic liberation.

Patrick Bond directs the University of KwaZulu-Natal's Centre for Civil Society in Durban: http://ccs.ukzn.ac.za

Rumi's Field

"Out beyond ideas of rightdoing and wrongdoing there is a field. I'll meet you there." -Rumi

Keeping the biggest possible picture in mind, paradoxically, may give us the best lens through which to focus clearly upon the messy details of our lives at every level - internationally, nationally, locally, even personally.

How big a picture? Try: the whole earth and everything and everyone on it, through hundreds of millions of years of time.

What can this abstract immensity have to do with our own lives? More than we think, because we really are a product of the changes the earth has undergone over eons and we are totally subject to the rules that dictated those changes. By rules we mean big processes, ones we are still trying to fully understand. Processes like evolution itself.

When a gigantic asteroid hit the earth in the Yucatan area 65 million years ago, the planetary changes that resulted were enough to wipe out the dinosaurs. New forms of life, ones that eventually evolved into our mammalian ancestors, were able to flourish in the post-asteroid conditions. The dinosaurs were swept aside forever. Organisms that do not adapt to the environment around them cannot survive. The environment determines the required change - no exceptions.

Now, it is human planning and foresight that will determine the fate of all the other species on earth. The true economy is not connected to the health of the stock market, but to the health of the living system as a whole. Our brains are simply not wired to think and plan within this great context. Instead, we have constructed artificial contexts that we can get our minds around more easily: the morning headlines in the newspaper, the nightly news on TV, the latest stories on our iPad, the quarterly profit-and-loss sheet - even all our diverse religious and cultural adherences.

The separating borders of nations themselves are artificial contexts that we hope will come "between too much and me" (Robert Frost), while at the same time we know very well that all our biggest challenges do not respect borders. The earth shakes and the jet stream carries radiation across oceans with the speed of a tsunami.

As this is being written in March of 2011, the headlines are preoccupied with two issues of daunting moral complexity: autocratic suppression of nonviolent revolution in the Middle East and the Japanese effort to regain control of their devastated nuclear plants.

The airways are buzzing with discussion about the pros and cons of the intervention to help the Libyan rebels and, at the same time, with the pros and cons of nuclear energy. Has the United States overextended itself? Is NATO in danger of getting bogged down in a civil war? Was it morally supportable to let Qaddafi massacre his own people? Can nuclear energy ever be made safe? Have we no choice but to turn to it, because the risks of global climate change are even greater?

In the larger picture, we have gone in 60 years from one nation with nuclear weapons to nine nations. That means nine complex command-and-control systems with fallible human beings managing them, with all the potential for mistakes, misinterpretations, or accidents. If our technology, no matter how innovative, does not work in harmony with the larger systems that gave us life, we may all find ourselves in the kind of trouble visited upon Hiroshima in 1945.

The first nuclear-powered electricity was generated in Idaho in 1951. Now there are 442 plants worldwide, again with fallible humans supposedly in total control. If our technology, no matter how innovative, does not work in harmony with the systems that gave us life, we may all find ourselves in the kind of trouble visited upon Japan in 2011.

That is our present "environment." Can it help us to situate that environment in Rumi's field, out beyond rightdoing and wrongdoing? The first thing this does is take us out of the realm of feeling righteous, right, morally pure, full of indignation and blame. In a state of mind that is inclusive of all, rather than our habitual mental condition of "us-and-them," we can acknowledge our profound moral and physical interdependence as users of energy, creators of waste, payers of taxes, weighers of risk. We can turn toward each other humbly and "meet" - have an authentic, inclusive, responsible, open encounter. We can seek big-picture truth together, acknowledging our fallibility, our subjectivity, our default setting of short-term self-interest - and our common survival goals.

The UN sanctioned intervention in Libya certainly looks like a major step in the right direction compared to the unilateral US intervention in Iraq. But its tragic violence is still symptomatic of a world where humans are very quick to turn to war and weapons as a "solution." It is part of a dying paradigm, one that is not working in the many other civil wars around the world, including Afghanistan and Iraq - and the Congo. In fact, all war has become civil war, fueled by an avalanche of weapons sales, never really resolving anything. What might replace it? Perhaps, it is the spirit we saw in Tahrir Square, a demand for accountability that includes self-accountability: the great authority of the refusal of violence, a far more exacting discipline than the waging of war. Those courageous Egyptian citizens spoke for more than themselves when they peacefully demanded a freeing-up of their political system.

Our existing energy systems are also part of a dying paradigm, a kind of civil war with the earth. It may be that humans can design a fail-safe nuclear power plant, even figure out what to do with the waste. So far, we haven't come close. But with the biggest context in mind, we can meet together "out beyond" and focus upon our energy challenge the great lens of our earth's story over millions of years. Maybe we will create some entirely new form of energy that is unambiguously life enhancing. Perhaps, we will learn a new nonviolence toward the planet that has given us so much, just as those in Tahrir Square modeled the treatment of others as they themselves wished to be treated. I'll meet you there.

Syed Saleem Shahzad, the Pakistan Bureau Chief for Asia Times Online who went missing on Sunday evening, has been killed, according to police.Shahzad, who has been writing for Hong Kong-based Asia Times Online for nearly 10 years, failed to show up for a scheduled appearance on a television talk show in the capital Islamabad.Police reported that his body was found in a canal in Mandi Bahauddin in Punjab province about 150 kilometers southeast of Islamabad and about 10 kilometers from where his car was found. They said that his body bore marks of torture.Earlier, the International Federation of Journalists released a statement saying it "urgently appeals to the Government of Pakistan to order its security and police agencies to respond immediately to find a senior journalist who disappeared in Islamabad on May 29".Prime Minister Syed Yusuf Raza Gilani expressed his "deep grief and sorrow" over Shahzad's death and ordered an immediate inquiry into his kidnapping and murder, according to Associated Press of Pakistan.Shahzad, 40, had on several occasions been warned by officials of the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) over articles they deemed to be detrimental to Pakistan's national interests or image. He leaves a wife, two sons aged 14 and seven, and a daughter aged 12.Human Rights Watch researcher Ali Dayan Hasan earlier said he suspected ISI officials abducted Shahzad, possibly because of a recent story he wrote on al-Qaeda infiltration in the Pakistani navy. Authorities haven't commented. (Al-Qaeda had warned of Pakistan strike.)Tony Allison, the Editor of Asia Times Online, expressed his deep concern for one of the most fearless journalists with whom he had ever worked. "We will bring the utmost pressure to bear on the authorities over this case. We at Asia Times Online express our deepest sympathies for Saleem's family."

Armed westerners have been filmed on the front line with rebels near Misrata in the first apparent confirmation that foreign special forces are playing an active role in the Libyan conflict.

A group of six westerners are clearly visible in a report by al-Jazeerafrom Dafniya, described as the westernmost point of the rebel lines west of the town of Misrata. Five of them were armed and wearing sand-coloured clothes, peaked caps, and cotton Arab scarves.

The sixth, apparently the most senior of the group, was carrying no visible weapon and wore a pink, short-sleeve shirt. He may be an intelligence officer. The group is seen talking to rebels and then quickly leaving on being spotted by the television crew.

The footage emerged as South Africa's president, Jacob Zuma, arrived in Tripoli in an attempt to broker a ceasefire. He described reports that he would ask Muammar Gaddafi to step down as "misleading", and said he would instead focus on humanitarian measures and ways to implement a plan concocted by the African Union for Libya make a transition to democratic rule but not seek Gaddafi's exile.

The westerners were seen by al-Jazeera on rebel lines late last week, days before British and French attack helicopters are due to join the Nato campaign. They are likely to be deployed on the outskirts of Misrata, from where pro-Gaddafi forces continue to shell rebel positions to the east.

There have been numerous reports in the British press that SAS soldiers are acting as spotters in Libya to help Nato warplanes target pro-Gaddafi forces. In March, six special forces soldiers and two MI6 officers were detained by rebel fighters when they landed on an abortive mission to meet rebel leaders in Benghazi, in an embarrassing episode for the SAS.

The group was withdrawn soon afterwards and a new "liaison team" sent in its place. Asked for comment on Monday, a Ministry of Defence spokeswoman said: "We don't have any forces out there."

The subject is sensitive as the UN security council resolution in March authorising the use of force in Libya specifically excludes "a foreign occupation force of any form on any part of Libyan territory".

Despite more than two months of bombing by Nato, rebels have remained unable to advance west of Misrata, or west of Brega, 300 miles to the east. The capital, Tripoli, also remains in the grip of Gaddafi, who has defied all attempts to force him to leave.

However, a fresh blow to his position came yesterday as eight Libyan army officers appeared in Rome, saying they were part of a group of as many as 120 military officials and soldiers who had defected from Gaddafi's side in recent days.

The eight officers – five generals, two colonels and a major – spoke at a news conference organised by the Italian government. The officers said they had defected in protest at Gaddafi's actions against his own people, citing killings of civilians and violence against women. They claimed that Gaddafi's campaign against the rebels was rapidly weakening.

Air force pilots landed in Italy and defected earlier in the rebellion. Under-trained and under-manned rebel forces have been encouraging defections as a way to whittle away support for Gaddafi in the absence of a ground army sent to assist them.

The latest group are reported to have been spurred largely by tensions arising from the appointment newcomers to senior positions in the security services.

The behaviour of these men, many of them relatively youthful Gaddafi loyalists in their mid-30s, are throught to have stirred anger and dismay among the army's officer ranks.

In April, William Hague announced that an expanded military liaison team would be dispatched to work with the Benghazi-based Transitional National Council, which is positioning itself as a democratic alternative to Gaddafi's rule.

The foreign secretary said the team would help the rebels improve "organisational structures, communications and logistics" but stressed: "Our officers will not be involved in training or arming the opposition's fighting forces, nor will they be involved in the planning or execution of the [transitional council's] military operations or in the provision of any other form of operational military advice."

There were unconfirmed reports at the time that Britain was planning to send former SAS members and other experienced soldiers to Libya under the cover of private security companies, paid for by Arab states, to train the anti-government forces.

"This should be the last attack on people's houses," the president told a news conference in Kabul. "Such attacks will no longer be allowed."

Karzai's call was viewed as mainly symbolic. Western military officials cited existing cooperation with Afghan authorities and pledged to continue consultations, but said privately that presidential authority does not include veto power over specific targeting decisions made in the heat of battle.

So we're in Afghanistan to bring Freedom and Democracy to the Afghan People, but the President of the country has no power whatsoever to tell us to stop bombing Afghan homes. His decrees are simply requests, "merely symbolic." Karzai, of course, is speaking not only for himself, but even more so for (and under pressure from) the Afghan People: the ones we're there to liberate, but who -- due to their strange, primitive, inscrutable culture and religion -- are bizarrely angry about being continuously liberated from their lives: "Karzai's statements . . . underscored widespread anger among Afghans over the deaths of noncombatants at the hands of foreign forces."

Indeed, the Afghan People -- on whose behalf we are fighting so valiantly -- are total ingrates and simply do not appreciate all that we're doing for them. A poll of Afghan men released earlier this month by the International Council on Security and Development found overwhelming opposition to NATO operations in their country. First there was this in Southern Afghanistan, where most of the fighting has taken place and where we are liberating residents from Taliban tyranny:

There there's this from Northern Afghanistan, long said to be the region most sympathetic to NATO's fighting:

The Taliban is widely unpopular among Afghans (though in the South, a majority oppose military operations against them); but whatever else is true, 8 out of 10 men, spread throughout all regions of that country, believe that NATO operations are bad for the Afghan people.

So the decisions of the Afghan President are totally irrelevant (when it conflicts with what we want). The views of the Afghan People are equally irrelevant. But we're there to bring them Freedom and Democracy (while we decree their elected leaders' decisions "merely symbolic") and are fighting for their own good (even though virtually none of them recognize that). What a great war, now America's longest and close to a decade old.

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